CinemaItalia UK could have not chosen a better film selection for this year mini festival
“Donne di Mafia, having a voice”. Two full features and one short film where the power and
the voice are regained by women. Women that are not only and no longer victims but also
‘ribelli’ (rebels), these to whom director Francesco Costabile dedicated his full feature “Una
Femmina – The Code of Silence”.
The powerful film selection, will leave you with a mixed feelings of rancour for one of the
most shameful Italian laws abolished only in 1981 but also with a feeling of hope, that things
can chance, sometimes with the obstinacy of one teenage girl.
It’s what we see in “Prima Donna – The Girl From Tomorrow”, a feature debut by Marta
Savina, who expands on her short film of 2017 “Viola, Franca” and tells us the story of Lia
(interpreted by Claudia Gusmano), largely based on real life events of Franca Viola, the
seventeen-year-old Sicilian girl abducted and raped in 1965, with the intention of forcing her
into marriage, or a ‘rehabilitating marriage’, whereby a rapist who married his victim would
have his crime automatically expunged.
It’s 1965, Franca and Lia are the most fragile of them all, but they now live in a context that is
perhaps ripe for women to start saying ‘basta’ (enough). Franca is far away from the
feminists’ movements that would lead to Women’s Liberation Movement and the Women’s
Revolt of the ‘70s, just to mention a few, but she is still considered and with reason as a
symbol of women’s emancipation.
We see Franca (interpreted by a young Ornella Muti) already in “La Moglie più Bella” (The
Most Beautiful Wife) by Italian director Damiano Damiani, who shot it just a few years after
the events, in 1970. The film depicted the mentality of a part of Italy that, to our horror, was
still siding not just with the rapists but with a status quo that had to maintain the clear
distinction between a woman who is considered to have honour and the one who is
considered ‘svergognata’ (woman without honour).
Assunta (starring Monica Vitti) in the brilliant masterpiece “La ragazza con la Pistola - The
Girl with a Pistol” by Mario Monicelli in 1968- is the woman who is left to avenge her own
honour after her kidnapper Vincenzo (Carlo Giuffre’) leaves for London in order to avoid the
rehabilitating marriage. Maestro Monicelli empowers Assunta so that she becomes the
heroine we all want to be.
Prima Donna, however, tells us something else and something more. It asks us a question.
How much courage does it take to remain unyielding, until a raped woman is considered
svergognata ever again?
Francesco Costabile “Una Femmina” attributes to women an even more powerful role. A
woman can make or break mafia. The film, inspired by the book ‘Fimmine Ribelli’ by Lirio
Abbate won, amongst others, the Globo d’Oro in 2022 for Best First Film and received two
nominations for the David di Donatello 2022 as best non-original screenplay and best
directorial debut and two nominations for the Nastro d’Argento as best first film and best
leading actor.
Here the talented Lina Siciliano (who also won the Globo d’Or for her interpretation)
delivers the character of Rosa, a strong woman whose talkativeness and irreverence is her
way to do justice to her silenced mother. In Una Femmina we see the heroine Rosa who
fights not just against a traditional male N’drangheta settings, but also against other women
who perhaps unwillingly keep the ‘family’ - which constitutes the strength of the ‘Ndrangheta
- united and are willing to sacrifice their own blood: “Gli uomini sono la rovina nostra” –
“men are our disgrace”– Rosa’s auntie will say.
In Una Femmina, the cinematography of Giuseppe Maio is also astonishing as it
encapsulates with perfection the gloomy atmosphere of a gloomy story but with eloquent and
striking images that captures the strengths only women have.
These two films have also something else in common: actor Fabrizio Ferracane who worked
with the likes of Giuseppe Tornatore e Marco Bellocchio and proved his acting skills in being
the gentle, protective and pitiful father of Lia in Prima Donna and the traditional, heartless,
arrogant mafia boss in Una Femmina.
Last but not least, the short film by director Federica Schiavello “Stay Behind”, tells it like it
is and leaves you wandering: “who is Antonella?”. A short of just under 13 minutes in which
Federica connected the dots of an all-Italian history, starting with Operation Gladio after the
second world war and leading to the formation of the clumsily denied existence of a Parallel
State that actually rules Italy. Definitely worth a watch.
“Donne di Mafia, having a voice” 2023 is organised by CinemaItaliaUK and sponsored
by Jacobacci&Associati and by the Department of Politics, Languages and International
Studies, University of Bath. It will take place at the Garden Cinema in London on 4 - 5 March
2023. Please check this out on https://www.thegardencinema.co.uk/ and get your tickets.